The myth called ‘perfect victim’

On August 6, the Goa Division Bench of the Bombay High Court set aside the 2021 judgment of the trial court that had acquitted Tarun Tejpal. The High Court convicted Tejpal, the former editor of Tehelka magazine, and sentenced him to 10 years of rigorous imprisonment for raping a former colleague.While terming the trial court’s ruling “perverse”, the High Court also said that it had fallen for the notion that a sexual assault complainant must be a ‘perfect victim’ and conduct herself in a certain way to appear credible.Nils Christie’s conceptWhat is the idea of a ‘perfect victim’ or an ‘ideal victim’? It was theorised by Norwegian criminologist Nils Christie in a chapter of the same name, in the book From Crime Policy to Victim Policy, in 1986.Christie said the ‘ideal victim’ or ‘perfect victim’ possesses five main attributes. First, they are often female, disabled, very young, or very old, and are therefore weak in relation to the offender. Second, they are involved in “respectable activities”. Third, they cannot reasonably be blamed for being where they were during the crime. Fourth, they do not know the offender personally. Fifth, they are attacked by a perpetrator who is “big and bad”. Christie also noted that while being weak, the victim must have enough social power to influence sympathy and have their victim status recognised.This one-size-fits-all idea of victimhood is propagated widely — by the media, social media, films, and by the larger society. Race, class, gender and other factors are involved in these dramatic portrayals where the most “innocent” and “deserving” become the ‘ideal victim’ while others are viewed as “undeserving” of sympathy, Christie argued.In contrast to the idea of the ‘ideal victim’ is the idea of the ‘ideal offender’. According to Christie, such an individual must be framed as purely bad, dangerous, and a stranger to the victim so that it becomes easy for society not to like him. When the offender is a familiar person with a “good background story”, the ‘ideal’ dynamic breaks down.In the case of Tejpal, his social status and his image as a liberal intellectual complicated this stereotype of the ‘ideal offender’. As per Christie’s argument, when there is no ‘ideal offender’ to hate, it becomes hard to perceive an ‘ideal victim’ to sympathise with.Hierarchy of victimisationThis narrow perception of an ‘ideal victim’ creates a hierarchy of victimisation. Those who are thought of as “undeserving” are even perceived as contributing to the situation and receive less sympathy or none at all.For instance, in the 1979 Mathura custodial rape case of a teenager, the Sessions Court had relied on the survivor’s previous sexual experience to reason that she had likely consented, and described her as “habituated to sexual intercourse”. The Supreme Court, while acquitting the accused policemen, noted the absence of any alarm or resistance from the survivor or injuries on her body.Similarly, in the gang-rape case of social worker Bhanwari Devi (1992) that became a catalyst for the formulation of the Vishakha guidelines and later, the enactment of the Sexual Harassment of Women at Workplace (Prevention, Prohibition and Redressal) Act, 2013, the Jaipur District and Sessions Court in 1995 acquitted the accused of gang rape. The court reasoned that it was unlikely that upper caste men would “pollute” themselves by having sexual relations with a Dalit woman. In short, in the eyes of the court, Devi’s caste status made her an unlikely ‘ideal victim’.In 2017, in an interim order, a Punjab and Haryana High Court division bench suspended the sentences and granted bail to three former Jindal Global Law School students convicted of gang-raping and blackmailing a classmate. It described the survivor’s behaviour as having a “perverse streak”.The court said, “...We are conscious of the fact that allegations of the victim regarding her being threatened into submission and blackmail lend sufficient diabolism to the offence, but a careful examination of her statement again offers an alternate conclusion of misadventure stemming from a promiscuous attitude and a voyeuristic mind.” This remark placed the survivor’s sexual behaviour at the centre of the court’s assessment, effectively questioning her status as an ‘ideal victim’.These rulings have demanded a ‘performance’ of trauma from survivors. Any digression from that expected behaviour has cast doubts on the survivors’ credibility and status as legitimate. The rulings reflect Christie’s theory that victimhood is not an objective state, but a deeply gendered moral status that can be granted or denied by society.The Tejpal caseIn 2021, in the Tejpal case, the Goa Sessions Court noted that there were several discrepancies in the survivor’s versions. It also said that while the victim had claimed to be in shock and trauma after exiting the lift on November 7, 2013, the CCTV footage showed that she was composed and smiling.The High Court criticised the Sessions Court for focusing on the complainant’s conduct, reactions, and personal background instead of the evidence on record. It also noted that a survivor has already faced trauma and might feel too ashamed, nervous, or confused to respond clearly when questioned repeatedly in an unfamiliar environment.The Supreme Court has questioned this idea in some of its judgments. In 2025, former Chief Justice B.R. Gavai had apologised on behalf of the judiciary for the Supreme Court judgment in the Mathura case, calling it a “moment of institutional embarrassment”.Recently, on August 3, the Supreme Court issued a report recommending greater gender sensitivity in judicial writing. It cautioned judges against drawing adverse conclusions from delayed reporting, lack of physical injuries, inconsistencies in testimony or a survivor’s demeanour, noting that trauma affects people differently.